The Yellow Wallpaper

The introduction to this short story mentions how it has been read on several levels. I read through each of the levels and, because of the topics we have been talking about in class, one grabbed my attention. The story has been read "as a metaphoric protest against the restriction women felt in a society that denied them full expression." I found it interesting that the rest cure was mainly prescribed to women. After reading the short story and the articles that were posted, I believe this bed rest was a way to restrict women. They were not allowed to work, or write, or see family members; they were isolated from society. The fact that they were forbidden to write and had to do it in secrecy, if at all, demonstrates the intellectual inequality that women of the time had to face. Being confined to bed all day, everyday drove these women into a worse state than before the "treatment". They had nothing to stimulate them, which is why the yellow wallpaper was so amusing in the story. It was all she could do, the only thing to entertain and stimulate her mind. At the beginning of the story she mentions how she does not like the yellow wallpaper and by the end she stays awake at night to watch the woman behind the pattern and at the conclusion of the story she believes she has escaped from behind the wallpaper. I think this progression is symbolic of her desecent into insanity.
After reading the article about why Gilman wrote this and that it was to help others I drew a paralell between the stripping of the wallpaper and trying to free other women and Gilman's attempt to help other women through publishing this short story. I found it interesting that the doctor who was famous for perscribing this treatment changed his ways after he read the story.